This
Rampart, Of Great Length, Has A Low Parapet; You Look
Over It At The Charming Little Vegetable-Gardens With
Which The Base Of The Hill Appears Exclusively To Be
Garnished.
The whole prospect is delightful, especially
the details of the part just under the walls, at the end
of the walk.
Here the river makes a shining twist,
which a painter might have invented, and the side of
the hill is terraced into several ledges, - a sort of
tangle of small blooming patches and little pavillions
with peaked roofs and green shutters. It is idle to
attempt to reproduce all this in words; it should be
reproduced only in water-colors. The reader, how-
ever, will already have remarked that disparity in
these ineffectual pages, which are pervaded by the
attempt to sketch without a palette or brushes. He will
doubtless, also, be struck with the grovelling vision
which, on such a spot as the ramparts of Poitiers,
peoples itself with carrots and cabbages rather than
with images of the Black Prince and the captive king.
I am not sure that in looking out from the Promenade
de Blossac you command the old battle-field; it is
enough that it was not far off, and that the great rout
of Frenchmen poured into the walls of Poitiers, leav-
ing on the ground a number of the fallen equal to
the little army (eight thousand) of the invader. I did
think of the battle. I wondered, rather helplessly,
where it had taken place; and I came away (as the
reader will see from the preceding sentence) without
finding out.
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